The Soviet authorities, including Stalin, considered the old officers who remained in the country after the Civil War to be a potential threat to themselves. Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrei Ganin spoke about this in an interview with Lenta.ru.
As the historian explained, repressions against military experts The Red Army in 1930-1931 was caused by the authorities’ fears of their disloyalty. At the end of the Civil War, at least 110 thousand former officers of the Russian Imperial Army ended up on the territory of Soviet Russia.
This was due to the fact that by the second half of the 1920s, the number of the entire personnel of the Red Army was lower than this figure and reached only about 98 thousand people (which included over 10 thousand former officers). Among these 110 thousand “formers” there remained tens of thousands of veterans of the anti-Bolshevik armies (by September 1, 1924, 50.9 thousand former white officers and officials were specially registered with the OGPU). According to Ganin, during the Civil War, the Bolshevik regime sought to use the knowledge and experience of such specialists, and after its completion, these people for the most part found themselves on the margins of life, were removed from any significant posts and transferred to teaching jobs or were completely dismissed from the army .
Poster by Victor Denis “Enemies of the Five Year Plan”
The attitude of the military experts themselves to the authorities was appropriate. The Red Army served not only those who immediately and voluntarily followed the Bolsheviks, but also former White Guards who were later captured or went over to the Reds, that is, potentially disloyal people or, in any case, those who had experience of organized armed resistance to the Reds.
Yes, many of them accepted the Soviet government and collaborated with it, but there were many who were hostile to the Bolsheviks, waited for the fall of the regime they established, sincerely hated the Soviet government for their own lack of rights or lowered social status, persecution of officers, persecution of the church, struggle with the peasantry, the loss of the previous way of life and much more
Business promotion
The scientist noted that the original defendants in the “Spring” case of 1930-1931 were not military personnel, but Ukrainian peasants. Ganin explained that “Spring” was the name given to the intelligence work begun in July 1930 by the Konotop city department of the GPU against kulaks from the local population, allegedly associated with the previous fictitious case of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” and involved in the rebel organization.
In the summer of 1930, development was completed, but an investigation began into a case with the same name, in which, in accordance with instructions from Moscow, defendants appeared among former officers. As the case grew, the number of such persons and their official status grew. “In general, there were even more civilians involved in the case than military officers, especially since former officers who did not serve in the Red Army at the time of their arrest were also considered civilians,” Ganin said.
According to the historian, responsibility for the fabrication of the “Spring” case lies with prominent Ukrainian security officers of those years – the head of the secret political department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR G.S. Lyushkov, Head of the Special Department of the Ukrainian Military District I.M. Leplevsky, Chairman of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR V.A. Balitskyas well as the Chairman of the OGPU of the USSR V.R. Menzhinsky, his deputy G.G., who pushed them from Moscow. Berry and I.V., who stood behind them all. Stalin.
Intrigues at Lubyanka
However, there were also opponents of such actions in the OGPU. First of all, this is the head of the Special Department of the OGPU, Y.K. Olsky, 2nd Deputy Chairman of the OGPU S.A. Messing, OGPU Plenipotentiary Representative for the Moscow Region L.N. Belsky, Head of the Main Inspectorate for Police and Criminal Investigation of the OGPU I.A. Vorontsov.
![Genrikh Lyushkov - in 1931, head of the secret political department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR.](https://icdn.lenta.ru/images/2024/05/21/14/20240521141243683/owl_pic_620_a22a5ce231f1688778477377eb40386c.webp)
Genrikh Lyushkov – in 1931, head of the secret political department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR.
Photo: Cyclowiki
Ganin noted that they were guided not by compassion for those innocently arrested, since the “oppositionists” themselves participated in fabricating cases, but by the logic of the apparatus struggle for power in the KGB department. As a result, they all eventually lost not only their positions, but also their service in the OGPU. Another opponent of Operation Spring, the head of the Secret Operations Directorate of the OGPU, E. G. Evdokimov, was transferred to another position.
The case was built on the basis of large-scale falsifications, contained contradictory and absurd testimony, repeatedly changed at the direction of the investigators, and did not have any material documentary evidence independent of the investigation. Investigators did not strive for special reliability. There is no evidence, incriminating documents or materials, other than the standard forced confessions of the arrested, which are very superficial and contradictory, in the cases of the arrested.
Related materials:
Ganin said that a significant part of the confessions in the Vesna case were falsified by investigators or obtained from those arrested under pressure as a result of deception, blackmail, bullying and torture. In particular, the methods of influencing the arrested are known from their complaints, as well as from secret in-cell surveillance of the 1930s, which recorded the conversations of the repressed.
However, in the end, the “Spring” case had to be closed, and the show trial did not take place. Ganin explained this fact by bureaucratic intrigues within the OGPU and new decisions of the country’s leadership. “The enormous all-Union successes of the Ukrainian security officers in “solving” the case compromised the center – it turned out that they worked better locally,” said the historian. “Therefore, the central apparatus of the OGPU opposed the development of the case on an all-Union scale and began checking the evidence already received. Of course, given the fabrication of such testimony, it would not have cost anything to refute it.”
![Prison photo of the Russian and Soviet military leader, military theorist, publicist and teacher, Major General of the Russian Imperial Army Alexander Svechin.](https://icdn.lenta.ru/images/2024/05/21/14/20240521143922518/owl_wide_1200_8c2c16f42a3bbefc86b28f56def668e0.jpg)
Prison photo of the Russian and Soviet military leader, military theorist, publicist and teacher, Major General of the Russian Imperial Army Alexander Svechin.
Photo courtesy of Andrey Ganin
In June 1931, at a meeting of business executives, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I.V. Stalin, proclaimed a new course in relation to the old specialists, since the “period of the height of sabotage” was over and the old intelligentsia turned towards Soviet power. In July 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided that arrests of specialists, including military personnel, were inadmissible without the consent of the relevant People’s Commissar.
The new task was to attract old personnel, rather than persecute them. The first wave of mass terror has subsided.
However, the materials from “Viasna” were not lost in archival dust—testimonies from the early 1930s were used to fabricate cases during the Great Terror
#reason #repressions #thousands #Red #Army #officers #revealed #Stalin #enemies